WTO TRIPS Council – Brazil, China, India and South Africa request discussion of the UN High-Level Panel on Access to Medicines

On Thursday, 27 October 2016, Brazil, China, India and South Africa submitted a communication (IP/C/W/619) to the World Trade Organization (WTO) requesting the WTO Secretariat to “place a dedicated agenda item for consideration at the 8-9 November 2016 session of the TRIPS Council entitled “the United Nations Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel Report on Access to Medicines.” In the WTO submission, Brazil, China, India and South Africa enclosed the entire Final Report of the UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel on Access to Continue Reading

HIV revenues and industry investments in clinical trials for HIV

According to IMS, the global market for HIV antiviral drugs was $24.4 billion in 2015. Over the past three decades, drug companies have registered an average of one new molecular entity HIV ARV per year. This is a lot of money to spend on HIV drugs to induce just one new drug per year.

Today I took a look at data from the NIH clinicaltrials.gov database, to see what the industry was reporting in terms of trials.

Continue Reading

Uncategorized

Relative prices of brand and generic drugs

Part 1, and the GPhA report on cost savings from generics, and prices of generics relative to brand in 2015.

The US based Generic Pharmaceutical Association (GPhA) has issued its 8th annual survey of cost savings due to generic medicines. (Copy here). The data they present comes from QuintilesIMS Institute.

The leading shout-out from the report is that generic drugs saved U.S. consumers and third party payers $227 billion in 2015.

Continue Reading

Uncategorized

Washington Monthly Cover Story Highlights Petition to Lower Price of Xtandi in U.S.

xtandi-cover-story.jpg

The November/December edition of the Washington Monthly cover story (available here) addresses executive actions to lower drug prices in the United States, in particular the use of march-in rights or royalty-free license rights in the Bayh-Dole Act. The story uses the case of Xtandi, a taxpayer-funded prostate cancer drug developed at UCLA with support from the National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Army, to highlight how those rights can be used by the executive branch to the lower the price of the drug. For more on Xtandi, see here: /xtandi. Continue Reading

Uncategorized

KEI December 2, 2016 meeting on the delinkage of R&D costs from drug prices

KEI is holding a December 2, 2016 meeting on the delinkage of R&D costs from drug prices.

The venue will be US Senate Hearing Room SD-106, Dirksen Office Building. The meeting will take place from 9:00am to 2:00pm.

A copy of the agenda is available here.

For more information about delinkage, see: http://delinkage.org.

To register for the event, please fill out this form: https://goo.gl/forms/AbP2npqLRLYneLjk1.
Continue Reading

Uncategorized

2016: Kite Pharma, KEI Comments on NIH Proposed Exclusive License for Cancer Treatment

Today, KEI submitted comments to the Notice published in the Federal Register on October 5, 2016, entitled “Prospective Grant of Exclusive Patent License: Development of Anti-CD70 Chimeric Antigen Receptors for the Treatment of CD70 Expressing Cancers.” KEI’s comments addressed issues with the NIH’s processes for granting exclusive licenses, and transparency in those licenses, resulting data, trials, pricing, and revenue.
Continue Reading

Kite Pharma Press Releases & News Stories Related to Relationship with National Cancer Institute

Kite Pharma is a California-based biopharmaceutical company working on various types of cell therapies for the treatment of cancer, in a bid to become the first pharmaceutical firm to gain successful FDA approval for this new class of cancer treatment.

Kite closely collaborates with the National Cancer Institute, which conducted significant early research into the forms of cell therapies that Kite is seeking to commercialize. NCI conducts clinical trials under Cooperative Research and Development Agreements (CRADAs) with Kite, and additionally has granted exclusive licenses on over a dozen patents to Kite on the same technologies.
Continue Reading